


What's left of the world

by panamdea



Series: Bruises like watermarks [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: X-Wing Series - Aaron Allston & Michael Stackpole
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Loss, Nawara only gets one line to be honest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:48:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25240384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/panamdea/pseuds/panamdea
Summary: Wes has lost track of a lot of things recently; the number of days since he woke to the aftermath of the battle at Distna; the number of interviews and debriefings he has endured; the number of medical and intelligence staff who have bombarded him with questions.But he hasn’t lost count of the number of his dead.Twelve more to add to his list. As though it wasn’t long enough already.A series of inter-connected moments following Wes as he struggles to come to terms with his losses after the Battle of Distna. Runs between the end ofIsard's Revengechapter 21 and the start of chapter 29.
Series: Bruises like watermarks [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/654002
Comments: 3
Kudos: 9





	What's left of the world

**Author's Note:**

> There are a couple of lines here that suggest Wes is ambivalent about having survived - in the second, third and last sections (that's the one with Face). There’s also some worrying about knowing what is real. 
> 
> As far as I know battleroms only ever appear in _Isard’s Revenge_. I'm picturing the recordings as a mix of something like the gun camera footage from Battlestar Galactica and 3D sensor data but who really knows?
> 
> This originally started as a couple of snippets I pulled out of what became “No Raised Alarm” (which I posted about 3.5 years ago so its been a while). It’s entirely un-betaed, all mistakes entirely my own. A mistake I know about; the book explicitly says Lyrr was shot down before Wes so implies Asyr afterwards, and I've said exactly opposite, which... oops? I really thought I'd checked that too.
> 
> ~~~~~
> 
>   
> What's gonna be left of the world if you're not in it?  
> ....  
> Every stumble and each misfire,  
> I miss you, I miss you, I miss you more.  
> \- _Good Grief_ , Bastille  
> 
> 
>   
> ~~~~~

Wes has lost track of a lot of things recently; the number of days since he woke to the aftermath of the battle at Distna; the number of interviews and debriefings he has endured; the number of medical and intelligence staff who have bombarded him with questions. 

But he hasn’t lost count of the number of his dead. 

Twelve more to add to his list. As though it wasn’t long enough already.

~~~~~

There are so many questions. Some brisk, some gentle, always unavoidable, often repeated in different ways and very few of which he can answer.

And always, inevitably, “You mustn’t blame yourself, Major.”

Which, actually, he doesn’t. Not really. Not for their deaths. He was there, he knows it was an ambush, that the Rogues were set up. He saw the numbers that took them down. He doesn’t blame himself for that. 

But for being the only survivor? Well that’s a different thing.

~~~~~

He may be the only survivor of the battle, but he isn’t technically the last Rogue. He knows Nawara is grieved by the squadron’s loss, they were his friends too, but he’s still practical. Wes doesn’t hold it against him. Somebody must be and he is just glad it doesn’t have to be him yet.

When Nawara suggests he should write to the Rogues' families his refusal is an instinctive, unconsidered reaction of sheer horror.

“No. I can’t-” He swallows back _please don’t make me_ , because he hasn’t yet been reduced to begging not to do his duty.

“They’d appreciate hearing from someone who was there. At the end. Who can tell them something about what happened.” 

He has no idea why Nawara thinks this is true. How can he, the survivor, tell the families of the lost Rogues anything they would want to know? He will be the last person in the galaxy they will want to hear from. 

And how can he tell them how sorry he is? He can’t tell them he would trade himself for their lost ones in a heartbeat. He can’t tell anyone. Even through the fog of still-stunned grief that makes every thought harder than it should be he knows a red flag when he sees it. He’s seen enough in his time. 

So rather than trying to pull sense from the suffocating mess of guilt and grief he goes for a more obvious argument. It’s safer. 

“I can’t tell them anything. All I remember is arriving in system and a whole wing of fighters appearing. Then I woke up. I don’t know what happened in between. I can’t tell anyone anything useful.” 

It isn’t quite true, but it’s easy. He thinks he remembers knowing everyone was gone but he doesn’t know how. It's a detail he doesn’t care to discuss. 

He wins the argument. It’s not even much of an argument in the end; he knows Nawara didn’t push him because he’s worried about him. He hates the pity in the other man’s eyes.

~~~~~

Someone should tell Lara.

The thought occurs to him midstride, taking him so completely by surprise he nearly trips over his own feet. 

Myn had been in his flight, under his command, and nobody else even knew Lara was still alive. Myn had genuinely tried to integrate better with the Rogues than he initially had with the Wraiths, but that hadn’t extended as far as advertising his relationship with the woman who had destroyed his first squadron. 

For a moment he contemplates ignoring the whole idea. She’ll see the general announcement when one is made and after everything she’d done, does he care enough about her feelings to spare her finding out that way? 

But after a minute of internal debate he acknowledges to himself that it is his responsibility. Regardless of his own personal grudge against Lara (eleven very personal grudges, he hasn’t forgotten his tally of dead), he owes it to Myn.

And if he contacts Lara, however clandestinely, he will have to do the same for Gavin and Slee’s families at least. He owes all his flight the same. And from there it will only be a small step to everyone else. 

The decision brings with it a wave of hot rage. Damn Lara for everything. Damn Myn for falling for her and damn him for dying and leaving him the job of somehow contacting a ghost he isn’t supposed to know about. And damn Wedge too, this should be his responsibility if he’d only had the decency to survive. 

Damn all the Rogues for getting themselves killed and leaving him alone.

~~~~~

He’s been to so many funerals. Funerals and memorial services for what feels like a hundred different cultures, the only common theme between them their lack of bodies. Fighter pilots don’t often leave bodies.

Couldn’t he once go to a wedding instead? He’s never been to a wedding, has only the vaguest idea what they’re like except he thinks they’re supposed to be happy. He’d like to see a hundred happy weddings. 

Gavin and Asyr had been going to get married. What a waste.

~~~~~

The battle, the end of the Rogues, is a blank in his memory. He has assumed he went down early or he’d remember more than the ambushing fighters appearing. When he is told he will be shown the surviving battlerom recording from the recovered remains of his own X-wing, he doesn’t know what it will show. Isn’t sure he wants to know.

Braced for anything it is almost an anticlimax. The recorder only logged a couple more seconds of data after the concussion missile shattered his fighter and mainly all he feels is relief that only Slee and Asyr were killed before the recording goes terminally static. Relief that he doesn’t have to watch everyone die. 

He thinks he must be a coward for being glad he can’t tell Mirax how Corran died.

Somewhere in the fourth, sixth or maybe hundredth viewing, his questioners stopping every few seconds to ask for clarification on this action or that manoeuvre, he stops pretending they aren’t all dead. Just because he doesn’t remember and the recording ends before it happened doesn’t mean it isn’t true. There isn’t another sane scenario that fits all the facts. 

It doesn’t make it easier, just leaves him caught between his furious sorrow and the guilty relief that he only has to annotate two deaths, not twelve.

~~~~~

Sometimes he thinks he remembers a burst of pain from the concussion missile he only knows about from the battlerom.

Rationally, he knows it’s just his brain turning the footage into a ghost of sensation; that he is only confusing memory with what he has watched so many times in debriefings it’s starting to feel like something he lived through. It scares him that with every viewing of the recordings it gets a little harder to tell the difference. He’s never had trouble with reality before and hates this new and unfamiliar feeling of not being able to trust himself. 

At least he knows for certain now what happened to Slee; caught by a TIE’s lucky shot as he brought down another. He doesn’t know how the rest of his flight died, though he knows it would have been bravely, fighting to the end and other cliches that are as true as they are trite and unhelpful.

But, unsettlingly, he is sure he remembers Asyr talking to him afterwards.

If he was going to hallucinate any of the Rogues he’d have put his money on Hobbie or Wedge. Or maybe one of his flight, one of the pilots he was responsible for. Perhaps Myn would drop by for some only-survivor-commiseration at the same time. But no, It was Asyr, who was definitely gone – he's watched her X-wing destroyed too many times to doubt that – apologising for the necessity of leaving him alone.

He hasn’t told anybody. He doesn’t need anyone else doubting his sanity. Questioning it himself is quite enough.

~~~~~

In the recordings of the battle he sounds calm. He doesn’t remember being calm, he remembers being angry.

Myn sounded calm in the data recordings from the ambush that wiped out Talon Squadron. The recollection makes him feel ill.

In the sims he’d flown the run that had killed the Talons. Hobbie had done good work turning Myn’s sensor data into a training simulation. It had hurt, knowing this was how a squadron full of pilots he’d trained had died, but he’d flown it relentlessly thirteen times; once for each of his eleven dead students; once for the one survivor he’d failed just as badly; once for himself. Over and over until his muscles ached and he was too tired to think and the odds were just as bad as they had been before. 

Then he’d gritted his teeth and watched all the new Wraith candidates except Myn fly it and fail, and then he’d gone and got very thoroughly and very seriously drunk. Though they’d been on separate assignments he knew Hobbie had done the same when the Rogues had flown it. He didn’t think it had helped him either. 

He wonders suddenly if someone is doing the same thing with the data from his X-wing, if Rogue Squadron’s death at Distna will become a training exercise for other pilots. His stomach twists in vicious horror at the thought and he heaves until he is shaking and exhausted, empty and horrified.

~~~~~

The recordings from Lyrr’s fighter don’t run much longer than those from his own, but long enough to see himself shot down.

Watching his own fighter splinter into pieces, his own body tumble helpless and unprotected into space, it seems inconceivable he could possibly have survived the X-Wing’s violent disintegration. For a moment of reeling confusion he wonders again if he is dreaming everything, if any of this is real at all. 

Then, seconds before Lyrr’s fighter too is destroyed and the recording cuts abruptly out-

“ _Wes_?”

-Hobbie says his name, disbelief raw in his voice. 

The shock of it shreds the last of his tenuous equilibrium and it is all he can do not to crumple to the floor and scream. He knows he will never forget the shake in his best friend’s voice as he said his name for the last time; it is the same as in his own when he wakes in the night, crying out for what he has lost.

Someone takes pity on him; the briefing is cut short and everyone is so very kriffing _kind_ about it all. But it doesn't matter, doesn't mean anything, because they have shown him his losses again and again, and now the battle he doesn’t remember is lodged in his head forever and he’ll still never know what happened next. 

They make him watch it all again, of course; kindness only goes goes so far with New Republic Intelligence. And even through his hollow, aching despair he still does his best to answer the questions that are thrown at him. It’s the only contribution he is allowed to make.

~~~~~

His nightmares are so vivid he wonders if they’re memories.

However his dreams start he always finds himself in sudden darkness. Voices crackle through his helmet’s comm, distorted and distant, and flares of laser fire burst around him. He hears Hobbie shouting his name, swearing at him, asking if he is alright and it’s too hard to answer because he hurts too much to move and then everything is quiet, because everyone is dead and he’s alone in the dark where his squadron doesn’t answer his silent, desperate pleadings for someone to be there, anyone, because they’re all dead and he’s cold and alone- 

-and he wakes knowing that it is all true, and curls up on himself, shaking, until he sleeps and it all starts again.

~~~~~

“You look tired.” Face’s tone is conversational but Wes knows there’s keen interest below it. Everybody’s interested in everything he says now. Its unsettling being so scrutinised by everyone. At least Face hasn’t opened with the equally true _you look terrible_. Two years of command has apparently taught him some tact.

“Yeah, well, I haven’t been sleeping very well.” Wes says in a tone he hopes will end that line of discussion. Its not like Face doesn’t have nightmares too but Wes doesn’t want to talk about his own. 

Face ignores the unspoken warning. “How are you doing otherwise?” Wes shoots him a cynical look and Face grimaces, shakes his head. “Not as an intelligence agent, Wes, as your friend. How are you doing?”

“People keep asking me that and I don’t know what they want to hear. How am I supposed to be doing?”

“There’s no right answer.”

“Haven’t been given a list of things to look out for?” He’s so tired of being asked how he is but he can’t muster the energy for hostility even if he didn’t mostly believe Face means well. Face didn't have to make time to catch up with him on the way to the intelligence briefing he's been so urgently summoned back to Corsucant for; Wes appreciates that, in a distant, dutiful way. 

“I’m not here officially, Wes, I told you that.”

“Yeah. Okay.” He’s still not totally sure he believes it but he can’t be bothered arguing the point. 

Face tries again. “So, are you alright?”

Wes laughs, a bitter edge he can’t hide to the sound. “Of course I’m not. But apparently I will be. One day.”

“You don’t sound convinced.”

“I know how this goes.” Wes says flatly. “They’re not the first friends I’ve lost.” 

They’re not even the most he’s lost in one battle. No, his list of dead is long and full of friends, and he knows from painful experience that one day he’ll be able to think about the Rogues without the splinters of misery lodged in his heart right now. He knows it won’t hurt like this forever. He sort of wants it to though. Despite all his past, grim lessons in grief, right now he still can’t fathom how removing the pain from their memories is possible and he’d rather live with the hurt than forget them.

Looking uncomfortable Face changes tack. “Do you know what you’re going to do now?”

“No.” Wes says shortly. He has no idea what he wants anymore but unless he resigns it won’t be his decision anyway. As soon as Command have decided he’s safe they’ll put him back to work. It might be a relief. 

“Do you think you'll be assigned to another squadron?”

Wes shuts his eyes for a moment trying to imagine how being in another squadron would be. Who is he if he isn’t a Rogue? Even when he was a trainer or a Wraith he was a Rogue at heart. Besides-

“Who’d want me? I’m a breathing proof of failure. A reminder that even Rogue Squadron can die.” 

Face frowns. “No commander worth anything would count one mission against you, not with the rest of your history.” 

“Even when that mission's the one that wiped out Rogue Squadron?” And when there’s another lost squadron in his past? The loss of Talon Squadron will haunt him forever; when assessing his record will anyone else care that he still mourns each of the eleven, idealistic, young pilots he still feels responsible for? Or will they just be another set of casualties to count against him? 

“Rogue Squadron isn’t gone, Wes. You’re still here.”

Wes looks at him sharply and the other man recoils slightly at whatever expression is on his face. 

“I got shot down, Face. It was just dumb, stupid chance I survived, not skill.” He still can’t shake the feeling his luck was bad not good but that’s another thing he can’t say to anyone. He can barely acknowledge it to himself, he’s afraid of where that might lead. 

“You could rebuild Rogue Squadron.” Face suggests. 

Wes smiles humourlessly. “I don’t think so.”

“Wedge would want-” 

“Wedge is dead, so his opinion carries less weight than it did.” Wes cuts Face off, sees him wince. 

He’s pretty sure Wedge would want him to move on, but right now he doesn’t know what that would even look like. He’s never aspired to lead a squadron, has even less desire to take Wedge’s place. Or Tycho’s, since he was supposed to be Rogue Leader when Wedge was inexorably pulled away to duties matching his new rank. He can’t possibly replace both of them at once, surely Command wouldn’t ask it of him. 

But they would, of course. If it would benefit the New Republic of course they’d ask. And he’d do it too. If he had to.

He’d do it but he’d hate it, so he says, as though saying it out loud will confirm it as true, “I’m not command material, Face, I think we all know that.” 

“I don’t think that’s true.” Face contradicts him bluntly. “I think you’d be a good CO if you wanted it. You were a great XO. One of the best.”

“There’s a world of difference between XO and CO.”

“And you were a Rogue flight leader.” Face presses. “Who else has better experience to be Rogue Leader?”

A lot of people, Wes is sure, even if he’d hate anyone else rebuilding Rogue Squadron even more than having to do it himself.

“Face-” he begins, his tone more pleading than warning. 

The other man holds up his hands in placation and surrender. “There are other options.” 

Wes shrugs. “It doesn’t matter. Command will send me wherever they want. Maybe they’ll assign me back to training. I was good at that at least.” Talon squadron aside. Will his association with not just one but two dead squadrons count against him there too? 

“You could put in a transfer request to Intelligence. To the Wraiths.” Face sounds almost diffident as he makes the suggestion but he’s watching Wes’ reaction closely. 

Wes snorts a laugh, surprising himself with his own amusement. “Right. Tainer would be thrilled.”

“I’ve spoken with Kell and he’s supportive. So’s Shalla. It’s a serious offer, Wes. You’d be welcome back with the Wraiths. If you want.”

Face can't possibly understand what his offer of belonging means, but Wes feels the knot in his chest ease just a little. It’s not the Rogues, not family, but it’s something. A squadron. A purpose. Perhaps it could be enough.


End file.
